JURIST - Paper Chase: UK government under pressure over Iraq war legal advice

[JURIST] The British government persisted Thursday in refusing to disclose the full legal advice it received from Attorney General Lord Goldsmith [official profile] on the Iraq war despite disclosure of a previously blanked-out text in the 2003 resignation letter of a Foreign Office legal advisor that said he had changed his mind over the legality of the conflict. The claim was made in a letter [text] written by former deputy legal adviser Elizabeth Wilmshurst, who resigned days before the war because she did not believe the invasion to be legal and was in fact a "crime of aggression". In the letter, she says Goldsmith changed his own mind over a ten day period after initially saying the war would be illegal without a second United Nations resolution. Opponents of the Blair government believe Goldsmith changed his mind due to political pressure. Goldsmith meanwhile maintains that his conclusion was independent and his own. BBC News has more.

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